SHOW/WORLD teaches old maps new tricks
November 4, 2008
I don’t envy you geography teachers. Ever since Pangaea split apart over 100 million years ago you’ve been stuck dealing with the same seven shapes. Sure, every once in a while a landmass changes names because of a change in ownership, but you have to admit that an awful lot of maps look the same.
Not so with SHOW/WORLD, which bills itself as “a new way to look at the world.” The premise is simple; you select a topic, such as population or CO2 emissions, and the traditional map transforms into a new map based on the data for that topic. For example, China appears larger on the population map, as it represents 19 percent of the world’s total population. The United States looks enormous on the armed forces spending map, as it accounts for 45 percent of what the world invests in the military. Topics range from education to energy, technology to tourism, and many other points in between.
While it’s true that this site is quite similar to Worldmapper, SHOW/WORLD has more to offer. In addition to maps that are re-sized in relation to a given topic, SHOW/WORLD provides percentages and overall rankings for individual countries compared to the rest of the world. There’s also a space for recommended reading, as well as a comments section. In short, SHOW/WORLD is a great resource for geography teachers searching for new variations on the same old world map. -JIMI RADABAUGH
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